Customary management systems (i.e., management systems that limit the use of marine resources), such as rotational fisheries closures, can limit harvest of resources. Nevertheless, the explicit goals of customary management are often to influence fish behavior (in particular flight distance, i.e., distance at which an organism begins to flee an approaching threat), rather than fish abundance. W...

This paper examines the status of research on indigenous Australian and Brazilian fishers’ knowledge. In Australia, research involving indigenous ecological knowledge has been done mainly in terrestrial environments. The marine environment has gradually increased its profile and share of this research over the last 15 years, following research and management issues associated with indigenous us...

We present the results of 769 fisher genotypes (Martes pennanti) studied across 35 landscapes in and around Ontario, Canada. Fishers were extirpated from much of southern Ontario prior to the 1950s. The recent recolonization of southern Ontario has been highly successful. We hypothesised that this recent expansion and recolonization originated from Algonquin Provincial Park, an area that has hi...

We conducted interviews of a representative sample of 106 retired fishers in Italy, Spain and Greece, asking specific questions about the trends they perceived in dolphin and shark abundances between 1940 and 1999 (in three 20 year periods) compared to the present abundance. The large marine fauna studied were not target species of the commercial fleet segment interviewed (trawl fishery). The f...

The problem of overexploitation in global fisheries is well-recognized. However, published assessment of fisheries spatio-temporal trends at the national scale is lacking for many high biodiversity developing countries, which is problematic since fisheries management is often implemented at the local or national levels. Here, we present the long-term spatio-temporal trends of Philippine fisheri...

Sawfishes (Pristidae) were formerly abundant in the western Indian Ocean, but current data on sawfish presence and distribution are lacking for most of the region. This paper summarises historical records of sawfishes in Mozambican waters and presents the findings of the first assessment of the presence and status of sawfishes in Mozambique. A countrywide baseline assessment was undertaken betw...

In the Philippines, very high fishing pressure coincides with the globally greatest number of shorefish species, yet no long-term fisheries data are available to explore species-level changes that may have occurred widely in the most species rich and vulnerable marine ecosystem, namely coral reefs. Through 2655 face-to-face interviews conducted between August 2012 and July 2014, we used fishers...

In southern Benin, the rapid growth of demographics and need for fishery products have forced public managers to adopt various management measures in face anti-ecological methods used by fishers; however, these strategies are often formulated independent from context. These not remained without consequence on daily lives fishers. This paper examines factors influencing fishers’ individual perce...